Chapter 38
“You need a bigger tub,” the man that had decided to join her for a bath said with another one of those kisses to her shoulder that she was quickly becoming addicted to as he absently ran his fingers down her arm, making her smile as she closed her eyes and laid there, boneless, and too exhausted to do anything more than enjoy this moment.
“Probably,” she agreed with a small, satisfied sigh.
Six. Times.
They’d made love six times and she had a feeling that they would have made love a seventh time if she hadn’t winced the last time he’d touched her. She was sore, very sore, in places that she’d never been sore before and that was probably why she couldn’t stop smiling.
Making love with Reese had been incredible and so different from her past that she couldn’t help but smile. Before it had been…
Frustrating.
She’d actually been half-afraid to expect the same from Reese, but he’d proved without a doubt that there was a big difference between having sex with a boy in the back of a pickup truck and being made love to by a man nicknamed Yummy. He’d held her, touched, licked, and kissed her in ways that had left her trembling and wanting to come back for more, which was the reason why she was sitting in this tub at three in the morning.
“You should have told me sooner,” he said, kissing her cheek, which he seemed to do a lot.
Not that she was complaining.
Far from it.
“Then you would have stopped,” she pointed out with a smile and a wiggle to tease that hard erection she felt pressing up against her back.
Groaning, he shifted beneath her. “Yes, I would have,” he admitted with a chuckle as he continued to trace a path down her arm.
For several minutes she just sat there, enjoying his touch, but soon her curiosity got the better of her. She opened her mouth, only to close it with a sigh and a reminder that it was none of her business. It didn’t matter that she was curious and was dying to know the answer, because it wasn’t her secret to tell.
So, she wasn’t going to ask.
She was just going to sit here and mind her own damn business, she told herself as she bit her lip to make damn sure that she didn’t ask him that one question that she was dying to know, because it wasn’t any of her business. When that didn’t work, she tried to think about other things, other things that had nothing to do with asking him why he-
“Just ask,” he said, chuckling.
She shouldn’t.
She really shouldn’t, but…
“I made a choice,” he said, taking pity on her and for that, she would probably bake a cake for him just as soon as her kitchen was done.
Until then…
“And what exactly prompted this decision?” she asked, deciding to give him a little help along the way, because that was the polite thing to do in cases like this.
He pressed a kiss against the back of her head with a heavy sigh and wrapped his arms around her. “Marybeth,” was all he said, and really, that’s all he needed to say, because it wasn’t her business.
Nope.
Definitely none of her business, she told herself even as she decided that she’d had enough of this bath. Of course, it had nothing to do with the fact that the man that she’d stupidly fallen in love with was in love with another woman, one if memory served her correctly, was married to his twin brother.
Yup, definitely had nothing to do with that, she decided as she moved to climb out of the tub, uncaring if she elbowed the bastard in the process. He’d slept with her when he was in love with another woman?
Oh, the bastard was so not getting that cake, she thought, accidentally/on purpose, elbowing him. Instead of apologizing and begging for her forgiveness, the bastard simply chuckled as he pulled her back in his arms.
“Are you going to let me finish before you maim me?” he asked, giving her shoulder another kiss that had her glaring ahead at the faded tile wall.
“Maybe,” she grumbled with a pout, not really sure that there was anything he could say to make this better, which was just another reminder of why it was important to mind your own damn business. Because, if she had, she wouldn’t be sitting here wishing that she’d just kept her big mouth shut.
“I wanted what my brother had, but not her. I’ve never been in love with Marybeth. She’s always been the pain in the ass sister that I never asked for,” he said, chuckling as he appeased her with another kiss.
“You probably should have started off with that,” she said with a sigh, relaxing back in his arms now that she no longer felt morally obligated to beat him with the towel rack.
“Probably,” he easily admitted as he took her hands in his and entwined their fingers before wrapping his arms back around her.
When he didn’t say anything else she cleared her throat, which thankfully did the trick. “It was also because of Haley,” he said, chuckling when she playfully elbowed him.
“You’re on thin ice here, Yummy,” she told him with a smile as she shifted so that she was lounging more comfortably against him.
“I’ll try to remember that,” he said, chuckling against her neck as he kissed her again.
“See that you do,” she said with a sniff, shifting again just for the hell of it and smiling when the move teased the large part of him nestled against her back. “Now, you were saying?” she asked innocently with another wiggle of her hips.
With a groan, he tightened his hold on her to stop the wiggling and she allowed it, for now. “It wasn’t really one thing, but a combination of things.”
“And what was that combination?” she asked, pulling her hands free so that she could run her fingers over his arms.
“I wasn’t ready to deal with what could happen,” he said slowly as though he was testing the words or trying not to upset her.
Understanding dawned.
“You knew a girl who got pregnant,” she said, as she traced circles on his arm.
“Several, but only one taught me a life lesson that I would never forget. I’d been dating this girl since I was fourteen and I’d thought that she was the sweetest girl alive, but it turned out that I didn’t know her at all. We’d done a lot of things, but we never took it to that point.”
“Why?”
“My father had a rule. It was pretty simple, but it was enough to make me think twice about having sex before I was ready. Until I was ready to support myself, a wife, and a baby I wasn’t ready for sex. It was that simple. When I found out that my girlfriend was pregnant I decided that was a damn good rule.”
“And it wasn’t yours,” she guessed.
“No, it wasn’t,” he said with a heavy sigh. “I don’t think I’d ever been so happy to be a virgin than I was at that moment,” he said, chuckling.
“I bet,” she murmured, wondering what he would think if he knew about her past and all the things that she’d done, because it could have just as easily been her. Well, it could have been if she’d ever been the type to cheat and try to lie about a pregnancy, which she could honestly say she never would have done.
“After that, I decided to wait until I found what my brother and so many of the men in my family had,” he said, taking her hand back into his.
“Why me?” she had to ask, because for the life of her, she couldn’t think of a single reason why after all this time that he would settle for someone like her.
He turned his head so that he could kiss the side of her neck. “Probably for the same reason that you’re here with me,” he said with another kiss.
“That’s not really answering my question there, Yummy,” she said, closing her eyes as she laid her head back against his chest.
“Because you drive me out of my fucking mind,” he growled as he shifted her on his lap and made that bath a little more interesting.